So today I was forced to go beyond my comfortable spot in the Lower Camera reading room, across town to the Sackler Library. Im doing my next paper on the Bloomsbury group, which will hopefully be done on Wednesday night...but it will probably be sometime early Thursday morning though. Since they were involved in the post-impressionism art scene, most of the information on them is in the Sackler, because it is affilliated with the Ashmolean art museum.
Anyway, let me tell you about this.
So I go up to the door, huge marble doorway, and I have to be buzzed in. (press the button, they ask you what youre doing there) Then I have to register at the front desk and lock my bags in a locker (not allowed to take bags in). Next I have to SWIPE my library card to get in, and then swipe it again to get through a revolving door. SUPER high security this one, sheesh.
And it gets better. The building is circular, with two staircases on either side. Of course I got lost like 50 times, and I just know the people sitting in there, trying to read in silence, were super annoyed by me walking by every 30 seconds (about how long it takes to walk around the outside of the circle...while looking for the bathroom). I would go down one staircase to the lower floor, walk around it, then not make it back to the same staircase, and unaware would walk back up to the top floor and come out, look around, and be so lost. (dont judge until you try it)
Coming from a university that doesn't find it important to make their library highly functional or useful I have encountered some crazy new things in the libraries here. But rolling shelves?! I never knew there was such a (Amanda just brought me coffee...she is a sweet angel from heaven!) possibility! There are numbers on the outside of the shelves and if you need a book you pull out the little nobby thing and turn the crank to wheel an ENTIRE BOOKSHELF 4 or 5 feet down the line. You then get your books and put the shelf back..or leave it there..Im actually not sure, now that I think about it what you are supposed to do when youre done. Oh well.
Needless to say it was a very interesting, and by interesting I mean confusing, experience.
3 comments:
We have rolling bookshelves! I'll have to show you sometime...they are probably not as cool as the ones you are talking about but you can squish people in them if you want to...provides good entertainment. love you
Yeah, we have them too! But no one uses those books. Tell Jonathan if he lets me stay in the dorms with you that I will make him a cake! His very own cake. And also inform him that I make a wicked good carrot cake with no carrots, if he's interested.
The rolling bookcases are cool -- they are often used to store lesser-used books, or used in libraries that don't allow people in the stacks. I have a friend from undergrad who is a law librarian at Pepperdine. I went up once to visit him at the library, and he was so proud of the rolling bookcases, he had to show them to me. All of them. Over and over.
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